


Becoming Henry

by SpringZephyr



Series: Demonic Petting Zoo [4]
Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt, Fluff and Angst, Gender-neutral Reader, Men Crying, Neck Kissing, Other, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 18:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29230035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpringZephyr/pseuds/SpringZephyr
Summary: "I'm a gross, smelly, waste of space – ”He stops speaking when you tug on a strand of his hair. Not too hard, just enough for him to notice your disagreement. It's one of the longer strands, the ones that make Levi look like he gave himself a haircut in front of the bathroom mirror to avoid interacting with another living being – which he probably did.Physical contact might be the key to making Levi open up.
Relationships: Leviathan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader, Leviathan/Main Character (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)
Series: Demonic Petting Zoo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145633
Comments: 4
Kudos: 172





	Becoming Henry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [otomekaidii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/otomekaidii/gifts).



> Pretty sure I called those things on Levi's head horns the last time I wrote about his demon form, because I didn't feel like explaining this, but I'm convinced those things are antlers. What's the difference, you ask? Well, the most outwardly noticeable one is that antlers have “branches” called tines, and horns do not.
> 
> ...Another difference (spoilers for a future work) is that horns grow continuously, but antlers are shed and regrown.

Currently, you are sitting in the bath tub, and Levi next to the tub in his gaming chair. There's an anime streaming on his computer, some isekai show that Levi is in love with, and you, unfortunately, can't seem to remember the name of –

The time you spend not paying attention to the show gives you plenty more time to observe Levi in his natural environment. It's easy, even though you have to look up at him slightly.

He's hugging one of his larger Ruri-chan plushies close, one pigtail buried against his chest. His human form, you're fairly certain, is like an uncomfortable second skin for Levi – a costume he keeps wearing, so others will continue to accept him. Although you've told him multiple times that you don't mind him shifting to his demon form when it's only the two of you, he never does it. Unable to keep still, he swivels the chair slowly back and forth using the tips of his toes...

"You painted your toe nails?" you ask. The dark blue polish is eye catching, and you wonder how you hadn't noticed it before.

"Ah!" Levi winces, like you've accused him of something scandalous instead. His grip on Ruri-chan, his momentary sense of security, tightens. She smiles through it like always. "That wasn't… Asmo. Asmo did that…"

Interesting, you think. So he's okay with Asmo touching him? Or did Asmo simply not offer a choice?

“So what?” Levi goes from whining to sounding indignant – or trying to, at least – very quickly. “You decided to watch me instead of _I Was Summoned to Another World During My Championship Wrestling Match and Now I'm a Lowly but Optimistic Errand Boy Surrounded by Cute Animal People_?”

“No,” you respond equally quickly. You'll admit you don't like the show if you have to, but it's really Levi's anxiety that you're concerned about. Levi hates being stared at. “I just happened to notice it.”

Levi huffs, and actually stands up and turns away from the anime long enough to look for socks. His room is pretty messy. You hear him grumbling in annoyance when he opens his sock drawer to find it empty. There's a sock on his bookshelf and a sock next to his garbage can, and they don't match, but he apparently decides that's good enough and puts them on.

So he has goldfish swimming across a pale blue backdrop decorating one foot, and a plain black sock on the other.

Levi, naturally, catches you staring. “Lucifer bought them for me.”

He's implying the goldfish pair, but since he doesn't specify, you amuse yourself with thoughts of Leviathan looking up cute socks online.

“Do you want to sit next to me?” you ask, just as Levi reaches for the arm rest of his gaming chair. Ruri-chan's face is pointed at you when he freezes. Her encouraging smile exists for you, too. You start rearranging pillows to make the tub more comfortable for two people, when another thought occurs to you. “Or on my lap?”

Every part of him remains momentarily frozen except for his face, which is turning red, with the gradualness of a leaf in autumn as he processes. He's so embarrassed, it's caused time to slow down.

“You sound just like Asmo.”

“Hm...”

“F-fine, I'll sit _next_ to you.” He doesn't do a good job of not brushing his legs against you as he climbs into the tub. “But only because you asked,” he adds, which is pretty much Leviathan speech for _he wishes you'd asked sooner_.

“There's not a lot of room in here,” you add, which is a lie, because his bathtub is roughly the same size as one of his bookshelves full of collectibles. “If you and Ruri-chan have to snuggle with me, I understand.”

This demon turned tomato is no longer looking at you, but you can see how flushed the nape of his neck is. Out of all his brothers, Levi is the most – expressive? Not on purpose, you're sure, but you think it's cute, even if he doesn't.

Autoplay forces the next episode to start.

“Sorry if I smell funny,” Levi mumbles, halfway through the theme song. “Or if I say something that makes you uncomfortable. And for not having a real bed, and making you sit in a bathtub. I know I'm hard to be around.”

“Well, I may have farted on your pillow, so we're even.”

Levi makes a choking noise. “T-that's not funny!”

“The point is,” you hush him with words alone, “that I don't mind being around you. Or listening to you talk... and I don't think you smell, if you're worried about that. Not that badly, anyway.”

“What's that supposed to mean?!”

 _That you're fun to tease_ , you think, but since Ruri-chan is possibly at her limit for being hugged, you don't say that out loud. You're sitting at the head of his bed, the end farthest from his computer desk and facing the monitors, and Levi is resting with his back against one of the sides. There's really not that much distance between the two of you.

“I'm going to touch you.” He might respond better if you give him a warning first. “Is that okay?”

He doesn't answer, apart from a tight lipped nod. His eyes dart back to the anime, then flick in your direction. This happens a few times, and the rest of him is facing forward, not really looking at either you or the show anymore.

You start by brushing his hair to the side, just over the shell of his ear. It falls limply back in place, too short or too fine to stay. Levi's back slides down the wall of the tub, his shirt bunching up to expose a sliver of skin as he does.

“Too much?” you ask.

Levi shakes his head.

"I'm fine," he insists, breathing loudly through his nose. "Not used to… this."

You run your hand through his hair again, this time from the crown of his head to his neck. "You've never had your hair played with before? Or had someone tell you you're beautiful?"

“Not exactly... a lot of opportunities for that. I'm a gross, smelly, waste of space – ”

He stops speaking when you tug on a strand of his hair. Not too hard, just enough for him to notice your disagreement. It's one of the longer strands, the ones that make Levi look like he gave himself a haircut in front of the bathroom mirror to avoid interacting with another living being – which he probably did.

Physical contact might be the key to making Levi open up. Not playing video games or listening to him ramble about the latest anime he's become obsessed with – no, he's very careful to keep personal feelings out of those conversations. And you could ask why he relates to the Lord of Shadow as many times as you wanted, but he's always cautious about saying too much.

This is the first time this key has been so thoroughly within your reach:

Whenever his hand brushes yours, after asking to borrow a pencil during class? He flinches like he's been singed by fire. Touching his biceps? Closes his eyes and loudly states that he hates it when you do that. He responds better to forehead pokes and head pats, but you're fairly certain that the frequency with which they show up in anime has something to do with it.

You repeat the languid motions from the top of his head to the dip of his neck a few times, before switching to scratching a spot just behind his ear.

"Oh!"

His shoulders curve forward, and he frowns once he notices you've stopped.

"Don't stop!” he insists. The sound is desperate, even for Levi. “Er, p-please don't stop?"

As the shock fades away, you do as he says – the longer you scratch at that spot, the more Levi's body weight starts to rest on you. You're not the one who closed the distance between the two of you.

“In volume 47 of TSL, there's a scene kind of like this one.” His thigh is bumping your knee now. “The Lord of Shadow is tired from having fought monsters in his territory, right? All he ever does is fight – they've changed in size and shape over the years, but they're always there. Then Henry, he comes out of nowhere, and he's like – I got this, L-O-L. But it sounds way cooler when he says it. Anyway, the Lord of Shadow has everything under control, but it doesn't _feel_ that way...? It doesn't feel that way to him. The Lord of Shadow feels like he _is_ losing, all of the time.”

As the weight of your arm starts growing heavier, you switch again to rubbing circles on his shoulder. Then Levi scoots again, so he almost is sitting on your lap, even though he said earlier that he wouldn't do it.

Now that you have access to his back, you start rubbing circles onto the spot between his shoulder blades instead. He relaxes under your hand.

At some point, the circles turn into little hearts, drawn with just the tip of your finger. Levi's body reacts to the difference, though you doubt he can tell what the shape is supposed to be. “There's also this episode of the Magical Ruri Hana, sort of earlier in the series but also sort of towards the middle, so nobody really remembers it, where Azuki-tan is convinced Ruri-chan doesn't need help after all and runs away... but that's not important. I mean it is, but it isn't – ”

When you touch Levi's neck, where scales are starting to form, he leans the rest of his weight against your chest. You push his head away, trying to be both firm and gentle, as you're not particularly interested in losing an eye today. The tips were rounded, like the point of a ballpoint pen, and it would definitely hurt to be poked by them.

Luckily, Levi is pliant, and allows you to shuffle around everything inside of the tub until it's organized in a way that makes both of you comfortable.

“It's dumb!” the pitch of his voice rises and falls inconsistently. Levi is a bit of a crybaby – the biggest crybaby out of his brothers, actually – and now does seem like a time where he'd be struggling to fend off tears. “What kind of loser projects their problems onto a fictional character?”

He needs the closeness of another person so much, but he's resisted it for so long.

“Why did Azuki-tan come back?” you ask Levi.

“Because... Ruri-chan noticed she was missing, and... said 'come back, I need you with me'...”

“How about Henry and the Lord of Shadow?”

You've already petted his hair, his arm, his back, his neck – you drum your fingers along his ribs, kissing the back of his head, to coax an answer out of him. There's a little bit of give, especially around his tummy. With how close the two of you are sitting, you can tell that he doesn't seem to enjoy your hands on his sides, however.

“...Henry draws a warm bath for the Lord, and vows to...” you start outlining the scales on his tail with a fingertip instead, which doesn't cause Levi to fidget as much. “...protect him...”

“And how about you and me?” you ask finally.

Levi is too busy sniffling to answer that one, but his body radiates warmth as he and Ruri-chan press closer. He can cry on your shoulder for as long as he needs.

**Author's Note:**

> “What kind of loser projects their problems onto a fictional character?” (laughs nervously) Not me, no, never, stop staring.


End file.
